Disney promotes diversity without discord

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Mulan and Mushu join dancers as they perform during Mulan’s Lunar New Year Procession on the first day of Disney’s Lunar New Year celebration at California Adventure in Anaheim on Friday, Jan 26, 2018. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Immigration and diversity might be controversial topics on cable TV shout-fests, but Disneyland has found a way to turn those issues into attractions at Disney California Adventure.

Disney’s theme park designers long have tried to slip some low-key social messages into their attractions. In Walt Disney’s lifetime, this was most apparent in the company’s 1964 New York World’s Fair attractions, which proclaimed the modernist optimism of “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” in the Carousel of Progress, the ethnic inclusiveness of It’s a Small World and the non-partisan patriotism of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, which later led to Walt Disney World’s Hall of Presidents and Epcot’s The American Adventure.

Over the past couple months at the Disneyland Resort, fans have crowded Disney California Adventure for two festivals that celebrate the diversity of immigrant communities. Disney spun what could have been just another traditional Christmas celebration into Festival of the Holidays, which included food and customs from Hindu, Jewish and African-American traditions. Right now, Disney California Adventure is celebrating Lunar New Year with a similarly-structured festival, which expands the old “Chinese New Year” that everyone I knew as a child used to call it into a more inclusive pan-Asian celebration.

The Festival of Holidays at Disney California Adventure Park celebrates holiday festivities of diverse cultures with music, dance and craft-making, plus food at the Festive Foods Marketplace. The daily lineup of entertainment includes nearly 50 performances of nine shows, with special Disney characters, street parties, cavalcades, musical ensembles and dance performances. The celebrations include Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas/Navidad and Three Kings Day. Guests can look for performances of traditional Indian dance that builds to a Bollywood party, a Klezmer band with a new global sound, the Mariachi Divas and an a cappella vocal group that puts an R&B spin on holiday songs. (Photo by Scott Brinegar/Disneyland Resort)

I think part of the brilliance of these festivals is how Disney presents them in a way that makes people completely forget the political drama currently surrounding immigration and diversity issues. Not that I think that Disney and its design team are promoting political apathy. But I believe that Disney recognizes that both its narrow business interest and the broader social interest are served by creating events that address diversity outside of a partisan political context.

Look, at this point, a broad majority of Californians have learned not just to live with diversity, but to embrace it. Festivals celebrating Jewish, African, Hindu, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese cultures are about as controversial in Southern California as sunshine and Animal Fries. But Disneyland’s cultural impact extends far beyond Orange and Los Angeles counties.

When Disney dresses Mickey and Minnie and its other iconic characters in costumes associated with other cultures, that matters to many of the people around the world who will see those pictures on the Internet. When Disney steps away from its usual promotion of its own entertainment franchises to hand over some of its stages to performing artists from local ethnic communities, that makes a statement about being open to diverse cultural influences. And when Disney puts Xiao Long Bao, Chana Masala and Nashville Hot Chicken on its menu, even for a limited time, it brings together people in a way that leaves them unable to argue divisive political issues because they are too busy stuffing their mouths with all that food.

Walt Disney participates in the grand opening of it’s a small world at Disneyland in 1966. The dolls inside first started singing the song at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. After the fair opened, Walt had the attraction brought to California where it was put into a building built for it at the north end of Disneyland. (File photo, Disneyland)

Political harmony is the final step in a long process that begins with the simple act of bringing people together. Theme parks, especially those run by Disney, are very good at doing that. With its recent festivals, Disneyland is not only bringing people together to eat and be entertained, it’s gently showing all of us that what tears some groups of people apart in one venue can bring them together in another.

Maybe that might lead more of us to recognize that if people can come together for one cause, perhaps we can find ways to come together for other causes, as well.